Successive offer communications with an offer recipient

ABSTRACT

Successive offer communications are sent to an offer recipient. A first offer communication includes an offer of a merchant and the second offer communication includes an announcement about the offer. The first and second offer communications are each formatted to be rendered by respective communication device, such as a mobile phone of the offer recipient or a Point of Interaction (POI) terminal. The content of the offer communications may be tailored to the offer recipient based on the offer recipient&#39;s past transactions within a transaction processing system or a real time geographical location of the offer recipient.

FIELD

Implementations generally relate to communicating data about an offer to incentivize a transaction, and more particularly, to successively communicating data about an offer of a merchant to an offer recipient in order to incentivize a subsequent transaction between the offer recipient and the merchant.

BACKGROUND

Merchants spend a considerable amount of money on research about consumer purchasing trends in order to better target their marketing efforts to potential consumers. In the U.S.A., for example, merchants may pay thousands of dollars for consumer demographic data as well as Nielsen Media Research® ratings of television viewing behavior of consumers in order to target the dissemination of their respective television advertisements. Similarly, merchants may pay for analysis of data about computer users' ‘click paths’ which are reflective of Wide Web browsing habits and patterns, in order to target their respective Internet advertisements.

The relevancy of the merchants' marketing efforts is directly dependent on the respective context in which they are made. For example, an advertisement about a retirement plan will have greater success in enticing a television viewer to becoming a member of the retirement plan if it is displayed on a television channel geared for adult viewers rather than if it was displayed on a children's television network.

Unfortunately, even if marketing efforts are well tailored, they may not be timely delivered. For example, the consumer may not be able to act upon an impulse to make a purchase at the time of receiving a marketing coupon such as when the consumer receives a merchant's coupon in a newspaper, where the coupon is intended for in-store use. A typical problem with such marketing models is that, though initially the consumer's intent to act upon the coupon may be high, the consumer have may forget about the merchant's newspaper coupon shortly thereafter due to the length of time between the consumer's viewing of the newspaper coupon and the consumer's subsequent shopping trip. Consequently, the merchant's marketing efforts may be ineffective at facilitating a subsequent transaction between the consumer and the merchant.

Accordingly, it would be an advance in the art of commerce to provide timely and well tailored offer communications to facilitate subsequent transactions.

SUMMARY

In one implementation, both an offer and a corresponding announcement about the offer are sent to a consumer. In this implementation, a transmission is received from a point of interaction (POI) terminal within a transaction processing system. The transmission includes information about a hard copy capability of the POI terminal and a Globally Unique IDentifier (GUID) of a consumer to whom an issuer has issued an account within the transaction processing system. An offer of a merchant is retrieved and sent to the POI terminal for rendering as a hard copy of a receipt. At a predetermined time thereafter, the GUID is used to retrieve an announcement about the offer that is sent to a mobile electronic device of the consumer for rendering as a soft copy.

In another implementation, each of an offer of a first merchant, a corresponding announcement about the offer, and data about a reward corresponding to a transaction with the first merchant is sent to a consumer. To do so, an offer of the first merchant is retrieved and sent to a POI terminal for rendering as a hard copy of a receipt of a second merchant. At a predetermined time thereafter, an announcement about the offer is retrieved and sent to a mobile electronic device of the consumer for rendering as a soft copy. A confirmation that the consumer conducted a transaction with the first merchant is received and data about a reward corresponding to the confirmation is sent for rending as a soft copy upon the mobile electronic device of the consumer.

In yet another implementation, an apparatus includes a computer readable medium having stored instructions. When the instructions are executed, data is received from a point of interaction (POI) terminal that is communicatively connected to a transaction processing system. The data includes a hard copy capability of the POI terminal and a GUID of a consumer to whom an issuer has issued an account within the transaction processing system. An offer of a merchant is retrieved and sent to the POI terminal for rendering as a hard copy. At a predetermined time thereafter, the GUID is used to retrieve an announcement about the offer that is sent to a mobile electronic device of the consumer for rendering as a soft copy.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Implementations will become more apparent from the detailed description set forth below when taken in conjunction with the drawings, in which like elements bear like reference numerals.

FIG. 1 depicts a block diagram illustrating an exemplary environment in which an offer recipient receives at least one offer;

FIG. 2 depicts a block diagram illustrating an exemplary transaction processing and offer system that can be operated in the environment of FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 depicts a flowchart of an exemplary method, that can be performed in the environment of FIG. 1, for a host to provide an offer to an offer recipient; and

FIG. 4 depicts a block diagram of an exemplary transaction processing system.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Consumers purchase resources, such goods and/or services, from merchants by engaging in transactions, with the corresponding merchants. The transactions or “purchases” may be sales, leases, rentals, assignments, and/or licenses of the resources, where some form of currency (e.g., money, “points” in a loyalty program, or minutes for cellular telephony air time usage) is given by the corresponding consumers to the corresponding merchants in exchange for the respective resources. Alternatively, the transactions may be gratuitous, such as donations to charitable organizations, where the consumers are the donors and the charitable organizations are the merchants receiving the corresponding donations. The transactions may be cashless such that currency is transferred from the consumers to the respective merchants through the use of corresponding accounts of the consumers, such as accounts issued to the corresponding consumers by corresponding issuers within a transaction processing system. Each consumer may be a person, an entity, or a group of persons or entities. Similarly, each merchant may be, for example, a retailer, a wholesaler, a reseller, a manufacturer, a broker, a distributor, a provider, a charitable organization, or any entity in the distribution chain of resources. In a business-to-business environment, a first merchant may engaged in the transaction with one of the consumers that is a second merchant, such as a small business to whom the first merchant is a supplier of resources.

Methods, apparatuses, systems, and networks for providing successive offer communications to consumers (e.g., “offer recipients”) are disclosed. An offer recipient receives a first offer communication including an offer for a resource of an offering merchant and receives a subsequent, second offer communication about the same resource of the offering merchant. The first and second offer communications are each formatted to be rendered by respective communication devices, such as a mobile phone of the offer recipient or a Point of Interaction (POI) terminal (e.g., a Point of Sale terminal) of a second merchant that may be different from the offering merchant. The content of the offer communication(s) may be tailored to the offer recipient based on, for example, a function of characteristics of the offer recipients, such as: an age of the offer recipient, the offer recipients' corresponding transaction data (e.g., a history of past transactions made payable upon accounts of one of the offer recipients), or a real time geographical location of the offer recipient. Therefore, some implementations allow for timely successive communications of offers that are tailored to consumers as offer recipients.

Referring to FIG. 1, a block diagram illustrates an exemplary environment in which an offer recipient receives at least one offer communication from a merchant within an offer system 100. The offer system 100 includes: (i) at least one offer recipient (o) 102 (e.g., at least one consumer that receives an offer communication) such as offer recipient (1) 102 through offer recipient (O) 102, where “O” can be up to and greater than an eight digit integer; (ii) at least one merchant (m) 104 (e.g., the merchant) such as merchant (1) 104 through merchant (M) 104, where “M” can be up to and greater than an eight digit integer; (iii) and at least one host (h) 106 such as host (1) 106 through host (H) 106, where “H” can be up to and greater than an eight digit integer (collectively “users”).

The host (h) 106 may be an entity that utilizes a special purpose computer to receive data, transmit data, store data, or execute algorithms (e.g., software). Host (h) 106 can operate the special purpose computer, for example: (i) to select the offer recipient (o) 102; (ii) to determine the content, timing of offer communication(s) to be sent to an offer recipient (o) 102; (iii) to determine the rendering capabilities of a recipient device to which the offer communication(s) are sent for delivery to the offer recipient (o) 102; (iv) etc. The host (h) 106 may also use the special purpose computer to algorithmically compare received data stored data to find a match. When a match is found, the computer can be operated to transmit the offer to a selected offer recipient (1) 102. To illustrate, the host (1) 106 may utilize a special purpose computer to execute the algorithm to determine if received data about a current transaction of the offer recipient (1) 102 satisfies a stored offer condition of the offer. If the offer condition is satisfied, the host (h) 106 may, in turn, facilitate the transmission (e.g., transmitting or broadcasting) of a corresponding offer communication to the offer recipient (1) 102. The transmission may be for delivery to a mobile device of the offer recipient (1) 102 or the POI terminal of the merchant (1) 104 that is co-located with the offer recipient (1) 102, or another communication device as would be known by those of ordinary skill in the art.

The offer system 100 may have at least one database DB 110. As appreciated by those skilled in the art, the DB 110 or components thereof may be any combination of databases, or the components thereof, in a single location or in multiple locations that are in mutual communication via a network. Data stored in the DB 110 may be structured by a database model, such as a relational model or a hierarchical model, where the model may govern how the data stored in the DB 110 may be accessed. For example, query languages can be used to query the data stored in the DB 110 to locate records, or portions thereof, that are relevant to the query. The DB 110 may include any of a variety of security features such as: access codes, firewalls, compression, decompression, encryption, de-encryption, or the like.

In some implementations, the data stored in the DB 110 may include information about the users of the offer system 100, their respective communication devices, or past interactions of the users with the offer system 100. The information about the users may include: (i) consumers; (ii) the offer recipients 102; (iii) the merchants 104; (iv) the hosts 106; (vi) capabilities of communication devices within the offer system 100; (vii) the communication channels within the offer system 100; (vii) etc. For example, the data stored in the DB 110 may include: (i) a profile created by the user; (ii) information purchased from external sources who supply such information; (iii) hard copy or soft copy capabilities of communication devices within the offer system 100; (iv) a transmission specification of a particular communication channel; (v) transaction data about transactions between one or more consumers and the merchant (m) 104; (vi) etc. A user profile of the merchant (m) 104 may include a merchant category of the merchant (m) 104, or a merchant identifier of the merchant (m) 104. The information purchased from an external source may include a Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) score of the offer recipient (o) 102. A transmission specification of the particular communication channel may include the speed of transmission (e.g., baud rate) or a security feature of the particular communication channel. The transaction data may include data about transactions upon the accounts of corresponding consumers with corresponding merchants 104. The transaction data may include analyses based on the past transactions of the consumers, such as trends, patterns, or segmentation of the past transactions.

The transaction data may have been stored in the DB 110 in real time or not in real time. In one implementation, the transaction data may have been stored during the real time processing of the corresponding transactions within a transaction processing system in communication or integrated with the offer system 100. In another implementation, the transactions may not have been stored in real time, such as by storing a plurality of past transactions in batch mode in the DB 110.

Each user of offer system 100 may be communicatively connected to at least one network Net (n) 108 such as Net (1) 108 through Net (N) 108, where “N” can be up to and greater than an eight digit integer. Each Net (n) 108 may represent any of a variety of suitable means for exchanging data, such as: the Internet, an intranet, an extranet, a wide area network (WAN), a local area network (LAN), a virtual private network, a satellite communications network, an Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) network, an interactive television network, or any combination of the forgoing. For example, the offer recipient (o) 102 may be connected to the host (h) 106 via Net (n) 108 (e.g., a satellite communication network), while the merchant (m) 104 may be connected to the host (h) 106 via Net (2) 108 (e.g., the Internet). Data flows between users of the offer system 100 through their respective connections to one or more network devices (e.g., Net (n) 108)) that are networked within the network Net (n) 108 in the offer system 100.

The Net (n) 108 may contain either or both wired or wireless connections for the transmission of signals including electrical connections, magnetic connections, or a combination thereof. Examples of such connections are known in the art and include: radio frequency connections, optical connections, etc. To illustrate, the connection for the transmission of signals may be a telephone link, a Digital Subscriber Line, or cable link. Moreover, Net (n) 108 may utilize any of a variety of communication protocols, such as Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), for example.

The offer system 100 may include various communication channels. For example, offer recipient (o) 102 may communicate with: the merchant (m) 104 via a channel 116 or the host (h) 106 via channel 112, the Net (n) 108, and a channel 118. Each communication channel in FIG. 1 is shown as a double arrow representing a plurality of signals and bidirectional communication channels. For example, the merchant (m) 104 may transmit data to the Net (1) 108 via channel 114 and receive data back from Net (2) 108 via another channel 114.

Each Net (n) 108 may connect one or more users via corresponding respective communication devices. Each of the communication devices may have a processing unit operatively connected to a display and memory such as Random Access Memory (“RAM”) and/or Read-Only Memory (“ROM”). The respective communication devices may each include a combination of hardware and software that enables an input or output device such as a keyboard, a mouse, a stylus and touch screen, a printer, or the like. Examples of communication devices include: a mobile telephone; a personal digital assistant; an intercommunication system device of the merchant (m) 104; a computer terminal of either the offer recipient (o) 102 or the merchant (m) 104; a television display of the merchant (m) 104; a POI terminal; or any other device capable of rendering the offer communication, such as a soft copy or hard copy of the offer communication. The POI terminal can be a physical or virtual communication vehicle that provides the opportunity, through any channel (e.g., channels 112, 114, 116, or 118) to engage with the offer recipient (o) 102 or the host (h) 106 for the purposes of providing content, messaging or other communication, related directly or indirectly to the facilitation or execution of a transaction between the merchant (m) 104 and the offer recipient (o) 102. Examples of the POI terminal include: a physical or virtual Point of Service (POS) terminal, a portable digital assistant, a cellular telephone, a computer capable of rendering audio offers, visual offers, and/or multimedia offers. Example offer renderings include formats such as e-mails, Internet web pages rendered via a browser executing on a computing device, or a combination of the forgoing.

The communication device may have various capabilities for receiving, storing, executing an algorithm, or outputting data, for example, through the use of a microprocessor, a programmable memory, or a transponder (e.g., transmitter or receiver). The transponder may have near field (e.g., “Blue Tooth” communication wireless protocol for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices) or far field communication capabilities (e.g., satellite communication or communication to cell sites of a cellular network) for telephony or data transfer such as communication with a global positioning system (GPS). The algorithm of the communication device may support a number of services such as: Short Message Service (SMS) for text messaging, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) for transfer of photographs and videos, electronic mail (e-mail) access, hard copy capabilities, or soft copy capabilities.

The communication device may have hard copy capabilities, such as a capability of a POS terminal to print a receipt for a transaction. The communication device may have, for example, a thermal printer that produces a printed image upon coated thermochromic paper by selectively heating portions of the thermochromic paper over a thermal print head, such as one that has a heating resistor. The thermal print head may produce various temperatures that manifest black and white and/or color hard copies. Other forms of hard copy capabilities include: dot matrix printing, ink jet printing, laser printing, dye-sublimation printing, photocopying, digital pressing, Braille printing or other means for producing a hard copy as is known by those of ordinary skill in the art. Examples of communication devices with hard copy capabilities include: an information kiosk, a cash register, a petroleum pump station, a facsimile machine, a voucher printer, or a computer that is linked to a printer.

The communication device may have soft copy capabilities, such as the ability to produce a digital file that is rendered on an electronic display or played on an audio speaker through the execution of a text, image, or sound processing program, for example. To illustrate, the offer recipient (o) 102 may have a Portable Consumer Device (PCD), such as a mobile telephone, that has hardware and a computer readable medium having software that, when executed, renders a digital file as an image upon an Liquid Crystal Display (LCD). The computer readable medium of the PCD, such as a magnetic stripe or a memory of a chip or a chipset, may include a volatile, a non-volatile, a read only, or a programmable memory that stores data, such as an account identifier, a consumer identifier, and/or an expiration date for the account associated with the account identifier. Examples of PCD's that have soft copy capabilities include: a smart payment card, a pager, a cellular telephone, a personal digital assistant, a digital audio player, a computer (e.g., laptop computer), a set-top box, a portable workstation, a minicomputer, or a combination thereof.

In one implementation, the offer system 100 can include, or be included within, a transaction processing system having a plurality of financial institutions (e.g., banks, credit unions, savings and loan institutions, or brokerages, etc.) and at least one transaction handler, where users of the offer system 100 can include: the transaction handler, at least one financial institution (e.g., a bank, a credit union, an issuer of a transaction payment account to the consumer, etc.), the consumer (e.g., offer recipient (o) 102), and the merchant (m) 104. Examples of transaction processing systems include VisaNet® network, the American Express® network and the Veriphone® network. See Infra Exemplary Transaction Processing System. In some implementations, the financial institution and/or the transaction handler may provide at least some of the functions of the host (h) 106.

Referring to FIG. 2, a block diagram illustrates an exemplary transaction processing and offer system 200 where the transaction processing system operates in the environment of the offer system 100. Here, transaction processing and offer system 200 includes the merchant (m) 104; the communication device 202 of the offer recipient (o) 102, depicted as a mobile device 202; the communication device 216 of the merchant (m) 104, depicted as the POS or web based POI 216; and the host (h) 106 that is represented by at least one transaction handler (th) 206 (e.g., the transaction handler) such as transaction handler (1) 206 through transaction handler (TH) 206, where the “TH” can be up to and greater than an eight digit integer.

The transaction handler (th) 206 may have various processing engines such as an interactive intelligence engine 214, a client processing engine 210, payment engines 208, and analytics engines 212, each of which may operate specific functionalities of the host (h) 106. Although shown in separate functional blocks in FIG. 2, other configurations are also possible, for example, the various processing engines may be combined as one engine or further segregated out as multiple engines.

The interactive intelligence engine 214 may receive data into, transmit data out of, and manage data within the transaction handler (th) 206. For example, the interactive intelligence engine 214 may execute algorithms that: enable mobile communication with various communication devices (e.g., the communication device 202 or the communication device 216); enable communication through the use of electronic commerce channels (e.g., channel 118 depicted in FIG. 1); enhance a POS Channel (e.g. channel 114 in FIG. 1) to facilitate receipt of transaction data for transitions upon accounts; or authenticate a user, such as the consumer, the offer recipient (o) 102 or the merchant (m) 104; enroll users of the transaction processing and offer system 200 (e.g., collects data from a profile created by the user and provides the user with access to the transaction and offer processing system 200); manage profiles; provide aliases for users of the transaction processing and offer system 200 (e.g., a pseudo-number for an account that is different from the Personal Account Number of the account); or provide alerts to the users, such as an alert about fraudulent use of the offer and transaction processing system 200.

The client processing engine 210 may operate logic for processing a transaction upon an account issued to the consumer (e.g., that may be a potential offer recipient (o) 102) by an issuer. For example, the client processing engine 210 may execute algorithms that: authorize and settle transactions (e.g., upon credit, debit, or charge accounts); process debit and prepaid account transactions; perform transaction processing typically conducted by a credit account issuer (e.g., a bank, a credit union, etc.); or perform transaction processing typically conducted by a merchant's acquirer.

The payment engines 208 may operate to transfer currency or other forms of value from one entity to another. For example, the payment engines 208 may execute algorithms that operate: prepaid payment processing, loyalty point calculation/disbursement, money transfer processes, commercial business-to-business payment processing, or consumer electronic commerce payment processing.

The analytics engines 212 may operate to calculate trends within the data accessible by the transaction handler (th) 206. The data accessible by the transaction handler (th) 206 may include: the data stored in the DB 110; the data received from an issuer processor, points processor 204; or data received from the merchant (m) 104, for example. The trend calculation may be done through execution of an algorithm that analyzes or mines the data accessible by the transaction handler (th) 206. Any conventional or predetermined algorithm for data analysis may be used to calculate the trend. As appreciated by those skilled in the art, the data analysis may be any of a data mining analysis such as Market Basket Analysis, a pattern recognition analysis, an optimization analysis, a statistical analysis, a demographic analysis, a segmentation analysis, or a combination thereof. To illustrate, the analytics engines 212 may use the predetermined algorithm to analyze the transaction data stored in the DB 110. An output of the analytics engines 212 may be a statistical trend showing that consumers who purchased school supplies in August for the last four years are likely to purchase school supplies this August. Also, general consumer trends may be analyzed to determine highly correlative events, such as “consumers who purchased shoes also buy socks within 90 days of a shoe purchase.” Another function of the analytics engines 212 may be to render reports on the analyzed data, such as electronic or hard copy renderings of the analyzed data.

The calculated trends may be used to tailor the content of the offer communications to the offer recipient (o) 102. For example, the output of the analytics engines 212 may be a determination of the reach and frequency with which an offer needs to be communicated to a particular demographic group of consumers in order to motivate commercial behavior of those consumers to conduct future transactions upon their issued accounts within the transaction processing system. The calculated trend may then be used to tailor the content of the offer communications in order to make the offers more relevant to the respective consumers. For example, the content of the offer communication may be based on the frequency with which the consumer engages in transactions with the offering merchant (1) 104.

Within the offer and transaction processing system 200, the issuer processor and points processor 204 or the merchant (m) 104 may provide respective data (e.g., user profiles or transaction data for transactions upon accounts) or respective business rules to the transaction handler (th) 206. The transaction handler (th) 206, may in turn, utilize the received business rules to select the offer recipient (o) 102 or determine the offer condition of a corresponding offer. For example, the transaction handler (th) may compare received transaction data of the consumer to the offer condition to determine whether to send a corresponding offer communication to the consumer or to determine the timing, content, frequency, and venue for the rendering of the offer communication to the consumer that becomes one of the offer recipients (o) 102.

An algorithm can be used to operate upon data to make a determination as to whether an offer condition of an offer has been satisfied. In one implementation, the transaction handler (th) 206 may employ a software implementation of such algorithm executed by computing apparatus so as to access data stored in the DB 110 or in the transaction data associated with transactions as they are processed by the offer and transaction processing system 200.

The offer condition can be specified to include one or more criterion. The criterion can be the occurrence of a physical activity, the status of specific data, the existence of a particular state, a time period (e.g., during daylight hours), or a location within a spatial zone, for example. When the condition is satisfied, delivery of the offer to the offer recipient (o) 102 is triggered. For example, the criterion may include: the transaction handler (th) 206 receiving transaction data about one of the transactions between the offer recipient (1) 102 and the merchant (m) 104 from a corresponding acquirer of the merchant (m) 104; a predetermined demographic of the offer recipient (o) 102; a category of the account of the offer recipient (o) 102 (e.g., a Visa gold card, a Black American Express card, etc.); a window of time in which the offer is sent (e.g., sending the offer: during hours of operation of a shop of the merchant (m) 104, during the day, or during a lunch hour); a transaction history of one of the accounts of the offer recipient (o) 102, such as when a group of the transactions of the offer recipient (o) 102 shows a tendency to purchase a particular type of resource; a consumer's habit or tendency to purchase the resource of competitors of the merchant (m) 104; a seasonal trend in a purchasing behavior of the offer recipient (o) 102; a status of the communication device of the offer recipient (o) 102 (e.g., the consumer's cell phone is in a ‘turned off’ status or otherwise is not in communication with a cellular network); or a combination of the forgoing.

In one implementation, the offer condition may be selected based on the merchant's 104 business rule. The business rule may focus on the timing of the delivery of the offer communication, the relevance of the content of the offer communication to the activities of the offer recipient (o) 102, or the location of the offer recipient (o) 102 at the time the offer recipient (o) 102 is to receive the offer communication. The merchant (m) 104 may want to send the offer communication when the offer recipient (o) 102 is in “a shopping mood,” and therefore, more receptive to making a purchase or engaging in a transaction. For example, if the merchant's (m) 104 business rule is “send my offer to the offer recipient (o) 102 when the offer recipient (o) 102 is in a shopping mall that includes one of my stores,” then the corresponding offer condition may be for the offer recipient (o) 102 to be located within a predetermined spatial zone including the shopping mall. Here, the transaction handler (th) 206 may receive a signal including data about the real time location of the offer recipient (1) 102, such as a signal from a co-located cellular telephone of the offer recipient (1) 102, or a real time authorization request for a transaction between the offer recipient (1) 102 and the merchant (1) 104. The transaction handler (th) 206 may utilize the data in the received signal to determine the real time location of the offer recipient (1) 102, or compare the determined real time location of the offer recipient (1) 102 with a criterion of the offer condition to find a match (e.g., the offer recipient (1) 102 is located in the predetermined spatial zone). If a match is found, the offer communication is sent to the offer recipient (1) 102 within temporal proximity to finding the match (e.g., right after finding the match, within seconds or hours of finding the match). In this manner, the offer recipient (1) 102 may receive the offer communication while the offer recipient (1) 102 is still in the shopping mood such that the merchant's (m) 104 desired targeting goal is met.

To illustrate, the merchant (1) 104 may access the interactive intelligence engine 214 via a web enabled communication device 216. The transaction handler (th) 206 may first authenticate the merchant (1) 104 as one of the merchants 104 that has enrolled to have access to the offer and transaction processing system 200. The authenticated merchant (1) 104 may define a business rule for corresponding offers such as: “send repeat offers of 10% off on chairs to all gold card account holders that are shopping in my ZIP code.” The transaction handler (th) 206 may create the offer conditions for the authenticated merchant's (1) 104 offers based on the received ‘business rule’, such as: (1) receipt of a real time transaction (e.g., “shopping” in the above ‘business rule’ example); (2) a real time transaction upon an account that has a Personal Account Number that is associated with a gold card account (e.g., “gold card account holder” in the above ‘business rule’ example) and; (3) where the real time transaction is received from a POI terminal that is known to be located within a predetermined geographic location (e.g., “my ZIP code” in the above ‘business rule’ example).

Subsequent to receiving the authenticated merchant's 104 business rules, the transaction handler (th) 206 may receive, in real time, an authorization request from the POS terminal 216 of a retailer for a transaction of a consumer purchasing a resource of the retailer that is located within the ZIP code of the merchant (1) 104. The transaction (th) 206 may compare the received real time transaction data within the authorization request to the offer conditions enumerated above to find respective matches. For example, the analytics engines 212 may run a matching algorithm that targets the consumer making the purchase as the offer recipient (1) 102. Moreover, the client processing engine 210 may authorize the transaction of the consumer, such as by sending an authorization response back to the POS terminal 216 of the retailer. The authorization response may have an approval for the transaction to be made payable upon the account of the consumer, the offer communication, and printing instructions for rending the corresponding offer on a paper receipt for the transaction between the retailer and the consumer that is the offer recipient (1) 102. The transaction handler (th) 206 may also send for a rendering of the corresponding offer to be sent to the consumer either while the consumer is co-located with the POS terminal 216 of the retailer or sometime thereafter. Such a rendering may be intended to be displayed upon a display of a mobile device 202 of the consumer, where the logical address of device 202 is stored in the DB 110. The analytics engines 212 may then create a report about the offers sent to the consumer (e.g., the offer recipient (1) 102) and the interactive intelligence engine 214 may send a transmission to the web enabled communication device 216 of the merchant (1) 104 where the report may be rendered, such as on a display of a computer of the merchant (1) 104 and/or on a hard copy that is printed out.

Referring to FIG. 3, a flowchart illustrates an exemplary method 300 providing successive offer communications about an offer of merchant (m) 104 to offer recipient (o) 102 within offer system 100 or offer and transaction processing system 200. In this implementation, the offer recipient (o) 102 receives two successive offer communications about the offer of the merchant (m) 104. The first communication includes the offer and may be rendered in hard copy format at a POI terminal; the second communication is an announcement about the offer, such as a reminder about the previously sent offer, that may be rendered in a soft copy format. Thereafter, a confirmation is received that the offer has been used toward a transaction with the merchant (m) 104. Data about a reward corresponding to the confirmation is retrieved and send to the offer recipient (o) 102. Here, for illustrative purposes only, the offer recipient (o) 102 is an account holder that has been issued an account by an issuer within the transaction processing system or the offer and transaction processing system 200. The offer recipient (o) 102 may have enrolled with the offer system 100 to receive from merchant (m) 104 any offers for which the offer recipient (o) 102 qualifies. Alternatively, the offer recipient (o) 102 may receive the offer of the merchant (m) 104 unsolicited, without enrolling with the offer system 100 to receive the merchant's (m) 104 offers.

At a step 302, a first transmission is received, including data about the account holder and data that is associated with a POI terminal. For example, the first transmission may include data that indicates that the account holder is interacting with the transaction processing and offer system 200 in order to access information about the account of the account holder or to request an application of a feature associated with the account (e.g., 24 hour concierge services for gold card members). To illustrate, the first transmission may be sent to the transaction processing and offer system 200 in order to: withdraw currency from the account, conduct a transaction upon the account, check on a balance of the account, transfer money from one account to another account, request a lodging upgrade, request a travel seating upgrade, request a restaurant seating upgrade, or request a preferential treatment.

The data about the account holder may include an identifier of the account holder that is globally unique (e.g., a ‘GUID’) within the offer system 100, the transaction processing system, or the transaction and offer processing system 200. For example, the GUID may be a Personal Account Number (PAN) of an account of the account holder, a hash of the PAN, a name of the account holder, an alphanumeric code unique to the account holder, an electronic recording of the voice of the account holder, a digital fingerprint of the account holder, or other means known to those of ordinary skill in the art to uniquely distinguish or identify the account holder within a system.

Moreover, the first transmission may include data about the POI terminal sufficient to determine a means to communicate with the account holder. As previously described, because the transaction processing system can operate in the offer system 100 environment, as shown in the transaction and offer processing system 200, the communication device (e.g., the POI terminal) in the transaction processing system becomes a means by which to provide the account holder with an offer communication. Consequently, in some implementations, the offer communication can be sent to the account holder at a moment when the account holder is accessing the account and is likely to be in a ‘buying mood’. Here, the concept of a consumer's ‘buying mood’ may be understood to be a particular time period within which the consumer has made first purchase and is likely to make a second purchase if it is chronologically proximal to the first purchase.

The data that is associated with a POI terminal in the first transmission may include information sufficient to determine the hard copy capability of the POI terminal. For example, the first transmission may be an authorization request for a transaction between a first account holder and the merchant (1) 104, sent from the POI terminal of the merchant (1) 104 and received by the transaction handler (th) 206. The authorization request may include a merchant identifier for the merchant (1) 104.

The received merchant identifier may be sufficient to determine the hard copy capability. For example, the transaction handler (th) 206 may compare the received merchant identifier of the merchant (1) 104 to the merchant identifiers of corresponding respective merchants (1-m) 104 stored in the DB 110, which may be a relational database. The relational database may associate the corresponding hard copy capability of the respective POI terminal of each of the merchants (1-m) 104 with the corresponding merchant identifiers of the merchants (1-m) 104. If the transaction handler (th) 206 finds a match between the received merchant identifier and the merchant identifier of the merchant (1) 104 stored in the DB 110, then the hard copy capability of the merchant's (1) 104 POI terminal may be retrieved.

In another example, first transmission may be a currency withdrawal request of the consumer. The request may include a code identifying an ATM from which the currency is being withdrawn. The first transmission may be sent from the ATM machine and received by the transaction handler (th) 206. The transaction handler (th) 206 may compare the received code identifying the ATM with data about the ATM stored in the DB 110 to retrieve the ATM's hard copy capability. Exemplary data about the hard copy capabilities of the POI terminal (e.g., the ATM) that may be included in the first transmission are: a make and model of an ink jet printer, a font printing option, color options of a thermal printer, dimensions of a hard copy output of the POI terminal, white space availability or white space location on receipts rendered by the POI terminal, time or day availably for printing options of the POI terminal, or other functional hard copy features of the POI terminal.

At a step 304, an offer of the merchant (m) 104 is retrieved, such as by retrieving the offer from the DB 110. As previously described, business rules may provide for the offer condition(s) that guide the retrieval of the offer of the merchant (m) 104. For example, a business rule of the merchant (2) 104 for the merchant's (2) 104 offers may be: “send my offer to account holders that receive currency over the amount of $20 US as ‘cash back’ during a debit card transaction at a POI terminal of another merchant (1) 104.” The transaction handler (th) 206 may compare the data received in the first transmission to the offer conditions of the above business rule to determine whether the account holder should be an offer recipient (o) 102 of the merchant's (2) 104 offer. Here, if the first transmission includes data indicating that the account holder is receiving $30 US as ‘cash back’, at a POI terminal of the merchant (1) 104, then the merchant's (2) 104 offer is retrieved from the DB 110.

The retrieved offer may be compatible, or may be made compatible with the hard copy capability of the POI terminal from which the first transmission was sent. In the above example, if the merchant's (2) 104 offer incorporates color graphs but the POI terminal hard copy capabilities only support black and white printing, then the data representing the merchant's (2) 104 offer may be augmented so as to render a black and white hard copy rather than a color copy of the merchant's (2) 104 offer. Alternatively, or in combination, the business rule for the offer may delineate the hard copy capability of the POI terminal as one of the offer conditions. To illustrate, one of the offer conditions of the merchant (2) 104's offer may be that the POI terminal hard copy capability includes color printing. Therefore, in this example, if the POI terminal does not support the above hard copy capability offer condition of color printing, then the merchant's (2) 104 offer will not be sent to the POI terminal as the offer condition has not be satisfied.

The content of the offer may be generic (“10% off any purchase at Joe's Restaurant”) or customized to the account holder (“Sally, get your usual coffee order of a half caffeinated, half decaffeinated soy latte at Peet's Coffee & Tea™ shop for free if you make your purchase at Peet's Coffee & Tea™ shop on Fourth Street by 11:15 AM today.”) As previously described, the customization of the offer may occur through algorithmic analysis of the transaction data of the account holder. For example, the analytics engines 212 may utilize the GUID of the account received in the first transmission to access the transaction data of past transactions of the account holder stored in the DB 110 to find at least one match. The matched data can then be analyzed for trends. In the above example, the matched data may show that Sally has utilized her account in the past for purchases at Peet's Coffee & Tea™ shop on Fourth Street. Moreover, if the past transactions with Peet's Coffee & Tea™ shop also included information about the purchased goods and/or services and that Sally previously bought (e.g., as indicted by Stock Keeping Unit, Universal Product Code, or other product descriptor) then a result of the analysis may also show repeated purchases of the same goods and/or services, here “a half caffeinated, half decaffeinated soy latte.” The result may, in turn, affect the content of the offer, such as the offer made to Sally for her “usual coffee order of a half caffeinated, half decaffeinated soy latte.”

Alternatively, or in combination, the customization of the offer may be based on the data received in the first transmission. For example, the first transmission may be an authorization request for a ‘card present’ transaction between the offer recipient (o) 102 and the merchant (5) 104. Here, the data received in the first transmission that could be used to customize the offer include: a name of the offer recipient, an amount of a purchase, a resource identifier of a resource that is being purchased (e.g., Universal Product Code), a date, a time of day, or a real time location of the offer recipient (o) 102 (e.g., based on a known physical location of the merchant (5) 104). In another example, the POI terminal may be an ATM from which the offer recipient (o) 102 may be withdrawing cash. Here, the first transmission may include a code from which a location of the ATM can be determined, and from which the real time location of the proximally located offer recipient (o) 102 can also be determined.

In some implementations, the content of the offer may be based on both the data stored in the DB 110 and the data included in the first transmission. Using the above two examples of the ATM and the Peet's Coffee & Tea™ shop, the physical addresses of each of the ATM and Peet's Coffee & Tea™ shop may be used to determine an expiration period for the offer or travel directions between the two locations. The corresponding physical addresses of each of the ATM and Peet's Coffee & Tea™ shop may have been retrieved and/or stored in the DB 110. These physical addresses may be used to target the offer content by limiting the offer duration to an approximation of the travel time from the ATM's physical address to Peet's Coffee & Tea™ shop's physical address (e.g., “ . . . if you come into Peet's Coffee & Tea™ shop on Fourth Street in the next ten minutes.”) Similarly, given that both the location of the ATM and the location of the Peet's Coffee & Tea™ shop are known, a map from the physical address of the ATM to the physical address of the Peet's Coffee & Tea™ shop can be determined and included in the offer communication.

At a step 306, a second transmission is formed to include the offer for rending as a hard copy upon the POI terminal. The second transmission can include the offer of the merchant (m) 104 and instructions for rendering a hard copy of the offer using the POI terminal (e.g., text, font, color, positioning), for example. In one implementation, the offer may be printed within the unused white space of a paper receipt (e.g., the back of the receipt or other available areas on the receipt) that is printed at the POI terminal. In the ATM/Peet's Coffee & Tea™ shop example above, Sally may receive a receipt from the ATM having information about her withdrawal of currency and a hard copy rendering of the Peet's Coffee and Tea™ offer upon the white space of the ATM receipt. In another example, the POI terminal may be a computer of the offer recipient (o) 102. The offer recipient (o) 102 may have engaged in an on-line e-commerce transaction using a computer executing software capable of conducting the on-line transaction via an Internet browser. The offer to the offer recipient (o) 102 may be rendered by a printer communicatively connected to the computer.

Information about the transmission of the offer communication to the offer recipient (o) 102 (e.g., the second transmission) may be traced and stored in the DB 110. The information about the transmission may include the time that the offer communication was formed, the time that the offer communication was sent, the time that the offer communication was received at the POI terminal, how the offer communication was rendered by the POI terminal, or the content of the offer communication that was sent to the offer recipient (o) 102 (e.g., expiration date of the offer that was sent to the offer recipient (o) 102), for example.

In some implementations, one or more announcements about the offer is also sent to the offer recipient (o) 102. The announcement (e.g., another offer communication) may be, for example, to remind the offer recipient (o) 102 of the offer that was previously sent or to augment the content of the previously sent offer communication. The content may be augmented by increasing a value of a discount, extending an expiration date, providing a further incentive such as a gratuitous gift, or associating the sent offer communication with an upcoming anniversary or birthday whose date was previously stored in the DB 110 in association with the offer recipient (o) 102, for example.

Both the announcement and the offer communication previously sent to the offer recipient (o) 102 (“first offer communication) may be rendered in the same format, or may be rendered in a different format. In one implementation, the first offer communication and the corresponding announcement are both rendered in hard copy format (e.g. printed on a paper receipt of the merchant (1) 104 and printed on a paper receipt of the merchant (2) 104, respectively). In another implementation, the first offer communication and the corresponding announcement are both rendered in soft copy format (e.g., rendered on the display of mobile device 202 and rendered on the display of a POI terminal or kiosk, respectively). In yet another implementation, one of the offer and the corresponding announcement may be rendered in a hard copy format while the other is rendered in a soft copy format. An algorithm may be used to determine the format that each of the first offer communication and the announcement are rendered. For example, the determined format for the offer may be a function of past offers sent to the offer recipient (o) 102; a function of the corresponding offer previously sent to the offer recipient (o) 102; and/or a function of other announcements sent to the offer recipient (o) 102.

At a step 308, a retrieval is made of a soft copy capability of a communication device of the offer recipient (o) 102 and the announcement has been designed so as to be compatible with the soft copy capability of the communication device. For example, the GUID of the offer recipient (1) 102 may be used to retrieve, from the DB 110, the soft copy capability of the mobile device 202 of the offer recipient (1) 102. The retrieved soft copy capability of the mobile device 202 may indicate, for example, that the mobile device 202 has a color display, a speaker set at about 40-60 decibels, a ring tone that is typically set to vibrate, and a mobile telephone coverage plan that allows for unlimited receipt of text messages. Here, the retrieved announcement may be a color text about the first offer communication.

As with the first offer communication, the announcement may be retrieved and then made compatible with the communication device of the offer recipient (o) 102; alternatively, only the announcement(s) that are compatible with the soft copy capability is retrieved. In the former, the retrieved announcement, or instructions for rendering the retrieved announcement, may be modified to become compatible with the soft copy capability of the communication device (e.g., printing in black and white instead of color, or changing a font). In the later, the soft copy capability of the communication device may be one of the announcement conditions of the announcement. To illustrate, if the soft copy capability of the communication device of the offer recipient (o) 102 is limited to audio renderings, then the announcement that is retrieved from the DB 110 is one that can be acoustically rendered, not one limited to a photographic rendering, for example. Here, if the original offer has no corresponding announcement that can be acoustically rendered, then no announcement will be sent to that communication device due to a failure to satisfy the announcement's conditions.

The content of the announcement corresponding to the first offer communication may be generic or customized to the offer recipient (o) 102. The generic content may be predetermined by the merchant (m) 104, such as: “don't forget, you have until X to use your Y % off coupon on a Macy's® purchase”), where “X” and “Y” are each populated with information based on the corresponding offer. Here, the “X” may be “this Friday,” and “Y” may be “10” such that the generic content of the announcement becomes “don't forget, you have until this Friday to use your 10% off coupon on a Macy's® purchase.” Alternatively, or in combination, as with the first offer communication, the content of the announcement may be tailored to the offer recipient (o) 102. For example, the analytics engines 212 may algorithmically analyze the data about the past transactions of the offer recipient (1) 102 stored in the DB 110, and retrieved using the GUID of the offer recipient (o) 102. The analysis may show that the offer recipient (1) 102 redeems previously sent offers more often than not when a follow-up announcement has been sent to the offer recipient (1) 102 including a further incentive of a gratuitous gift. Here, the customized content of the announcement may be modified for the offer recipient (1) 102 to further include a gratuitous gift (e.g., “don't forget, you have until this Friday to use your 10% off coupon on a Macy's® purchase. Come in and we will give you a sample of Calvin Klein's Obsession® perfume for free!”).

At a step 310, a third transmission is formed including the announcement for rendering as a soft copy upon the communication device of the offer recipient (o) 102. In the example above, the third transmission may be formed to include the Macy's announcement that is capable of rendering as a soft copy on the mobile device 202 of the offer recipient (o) 102. For example, the announcement may be rendered as digital text on the display of the mobile device 202 and/or acoustically through a speaker of the mobile device 202.

A test signal may be sent to the communication device of the offer recipient (o) 102 prior to the sending of the offer communications (e.g., the first offer communication or the announcement corresponding to the first offer communication). The test signal may be sent to determine, for example: if the communication device is ready to receive transmissions, such as determining if the communication device is “on” or the mobile device 202 has reception from its wireless network carrier; if the content of the transmissions received by the communication device is reasonably accurate, such as a content of a test signal to a content of a return signal from the communication device; or if the security features of the communication device are operative, such as determining if a return message is properly hashed. To illustrate, the transaction handler (th) 206, or agent thereof, may ping the mobile device 202 in order to test whether the mobile device 202 is reachable across the transaction and offer processing system 200. The mobile device 202 may send a corresponding acknowledgement of the ping back to the transaction handler (th) 206. In one implementation, the test signal is sent to query the real time location of the communication device of the offer recipient (o) 102; a response to the test signal may include information sufficient to determine the real time location of the communication device, such as global positioning system (GPS) information received from a GPS enabled mobile device 202.

A real time location of the communication device of the offer recipient (o) 102 may be determined prior to the sending of the announcement. The real time location may be based on a signal received from the communication device of the offer recipient (o) 102, such as a receipt of a transmission or a broadcast having information about the real time location of the communication device of the offer recipient (o) 102. For example, the communication device may be the mobile device 202 with location detecting capabilities as are known in the art (e.g., cellular telephony; triangulation; GPS; or the communication device's detection of wireless networks, the geographic location of which can be determined from a pre-existing database of wireless network locations, etc.). The communication device may receive data sufficient to determine the real time physical location of the communication device, that the communication device, in turn, transmits or broadcasts.

The content of the announcement may include a map or other travel guidance information that can direct the offer recipient (o) 102 to the merchant (m) 104 making the offer. For example, when a real time physical location of both the communication device of the offer recipient (c) 104 and a locality of the merchant (m) 104 at which the offer may be redeemed is known, travel guidance information to get from the communication device location to the locality of the merchant (m) 104 can be determined. The real time physical location of the communication device may be communicated by the communication device to the host (h) 106. The host (h) 106 may receive the transmission or broadcast from the communication device and utilize the data therein to determine the real time location of the communication device. The physical location of merchant (m) 104 may be determined based on the data stored in the DB 110, for example.

The travel guidance information can then be included in the third transmission that is sent to the offer recipient (o) 102. As with the other offer communications, the travel guidance information may be about any number of forms of travel from the communication device location to the locality of the merchant (m) 104, such as: walking, public mass transit, private motorized vehicle, private non-motorized vehicle, or a combination thereof.

The travel guidance information may be a graphical map. The map may be made compatible with the soft copy capability of the communication device of the offer recipient (o) 102. For example, the map may be adjusted to have readable font within a small display of the mobile device 202. Alternatively, or in combination, the map may include a live link to an Internet website, wherein the offer recipient (o) 102 may manipulate parameters for the map such as zoom-in or out options as is known in the art.

The timing of the delivery of the announcement to the offer recipient (o) 102 may be predetermined by the user(s) of the offer system 100, such as the merchant (m) 104, the offer recipient (o) 102, and/or the host (h) 106. For example, the timing of a delivery of the announcement may be delineated by the business rule for the offer, such as “send the subsequent announcement about the offer to the offer recipient (o) 102 within a week after sending the original offer.” Based on this business rule, the subsequent announcement may be programmed to be sent to the offer recipient (o) 102 prior to a passage of seven days. An email transmission including the announcement may be formed and sent after the lapse of five days from the sending of the corresponding offer. When the five days lapse, the email transmission is sent to an email address of the offer recipient (o) 102. Alternatively, or in combination, the timing of the delivery of the announcement may be requested by the offer recipient (o) 102. To illustrate, a profile of the offer recipient (o) 102 may have indicated that the offer recipient (o) 102 would like to receive a subsequent announcement about a corresponding offer within twenty-four hours of the delivery of the corresponding offer communication to the offer recipient (o) 102. In this implementation, the host (h) 106 may predetermine the timing of the offer communication(s), such as sending the announcement about the offer after an announcement condition is satisfied. To illustrate, the announcement condition may be specific to a real time location of the mobile device 202 of the offer recipient (o) 102, such as a real time detection of the mobile device 202 within a specified shopping mall. Here, the announcement is sent when the mobile device 202 is detected to be in the shopping mall.

Different timings can be specified for the delivery of an announcement to multiple users. For instance, an announcement may be sent to an offer recipient (o) 102 only when the recipient is located for a first specified amount of time at a specified shopping mall (e.g., where the first specified amount of time is dictated by host (h) 106) within a second specified amount of time after receiving the original offer (where second specified amount of time is specified by the offer or of the original offer). Other examples of a condition of specified amount of time include: prior to an expiration date of the offer; less than one month after the forming of the first offer communication; prior to a date set by the account holder; while the mobile electronic device is detected to be within a physical location; or a combination thereof.

Sometime after receiving the offer communication(s), the offer recipient (o) 102 may either automatically, or with further action, redeem the offer during a transaction with the merchant (m) 104 making the offer. The offer is automatically redeemed when the offer recipient (o) 102 engages in the transaction with the merchant (m) 104 making the offer. To illustrate, if the business rule for the offer dictates that a 5% credit is to be applied to any transaction with the merchant (1) 104 upon an account corresponding to a gold card, then any transaction with the merchant (1) 104 upon any such gold card is eligible for redemption of the offer and the offer can be redeemed automatically without any additional action by either the offer recipient (o) 102 or the merchant (1) 104. Here, the transaction handler (th) 206 may receive the transaction and execute a matching algorithm comparing the offer criterion to the transaction data of the offer recipient's (o) 102 transaction with the merchant (m) 104. If the offer conditions are met, the offer can be redeemed. In another implementation, either or both the offer recipient (o) 102 or the merchant (m) 104 making the offer perform a further action in order to redeem the offer. For example, indicia about the offer may be presented to merchant (m) 104 prior to redeeming the offer. The offer recipient (o) 102 may present either a hard copy or a soft copy rendering of the offer to the merchant (m) 104 during the transaction. Alternatively, or in combination, the offer recipient (o) 102 may verbally relay the terms of the offer to a cashier at the POI terminal of the merchant (m) 104, such as by relaying an offer code that is then entered into the POI terminal as part of the transaction (e.g., sent to the transaction processing and offer system 200 via an authorization request for the transaction). Thereafter, the transaction handler (th) 206 may run a matching algorithm to determine if the offer condition(s) are met.

In one implementation, the offer recipient (o) 102 redeems the offer after receiving a soft copy rendering of the announcement and engaging in a transaction using an Internet website. For example, the soft copy may be rendered upon a display of the mobile device 202 of the offer recipient (o) 102, such as an email containing a reminder about the offer and a hyperlink to an Internet website at which the offer recipient (o) 102 may redeem the offer. The offer recipient (o) 102 may select the hyperlink, thereby opening a browser in communication with the transaction processing and offer system 200 and accessing the Internet website. The Internet website may provide means for an interactive session, such that the offer recipient (o) 102 may accept the offer and redeem the offer by engaging in the transaction with the merchant (m) 104 making the offer.

At a step 312, a fourth transmission is received, including a confirmation that the offer has been used toward a transaction. If the offer is automatically redeemed, the fourth transmission may be sent from a first engine within the transaction handler (th) 206 to a second engine within the transaction handler (th) 206. Here, the first engine may execute the matching algorithm to find a match between the offer condition and the transaction data for the transaction. Once the match is found, the fourth transmission is sent to the second engine within the transaction handler (th) 206. In another implementation, where the offer is not automatically redeemed, then the fourth transmission may be sent, for example, from the communication device of the offer recipient (o) 102, such as when the offer recipient (o) 102 engages in the transaction redeeming the offer during the Internet website interactive session. Alternatively, or in combination, the fourth transmission may be sent by the merchant (m) 104 indicating that the offer is being used towards the transaction, such as by sending the offer code in the authorization request for the transaction.

In some implementations, redemption of the offer may make the offer recipient (o) 102 eligible for a reward. A second set of business rules associated with the offer may govern the eligibility for the reward. If the redemption of the offer matches a reward condition of the second set of business rules for the reward, then the redemption of the offer qualifies for the reward. To illustrate, the second set of business rules may include “if the offer is redeemed within a day of receiving the announcement about the offer, give the offer recipient (o) 102 fifty American Airlines frequent flyer points.” Here, if the transaction handler (th) 206 receives the fourth transmission, which may be an authorization request for the transaction with the merchant (m) 104, within a day of sending the announcement, then the reward condition is satisfied and the offer recipient (o) 102 qualifies for the reward of the fifty American Airlines frequent flyer points. The payment engines 208 of the transaction handler (th) 206 may utilize data received from the points processor 204, which may be stored in the DB 110, to calculate the reward amount or to apply the reward towards a frequent flyer account. In another illustration, the reward condition may include “If the offer is redeemed, then send a prepaid card valued at $10 dollars US to the home address of the offer recipient (o) 102.” Here, the reward condition is satisfied by a redemption of the offer and the reward as a consequence of such satisfaction is a physical prepaid card that is sent to the offer recipient (o) 102. Any combination of reward conditions and rewards are applicable, as would be known by those of ordinary skill in the art.

At a step 314, data about the reward corresponding to the received confirmation is retrieved. For example, if the redemption of the offer makes the offer recipient (o) 102 eligible to receive the reward, the payment engines 208 may calculate that the offer recipient (o) 102 is eligible to receive the reward (e.g., fifty frequent flyer points). A result of the calculation may be stored in the DB 110. At the step 314, the interactive intelligence engine 214 may execute an algorithm to retrieve the result from the DB 110 and submit the result to the corresponding offer recipient (o) 102. Alternatively, if the redemption of the offer does not make the offer recipient (o) 102 eligible to receive the reward (e.g., an action for redemption of the offer was not conducted in time to receive the reward in the above example), the data retrieved about the reward may indicate the ineligibility of the offer recipient (o) 102 to receive the reward. (e.g. “Sorry, your redemption of the offer did not qualify for the $10 dollars US prepaid card. Try again with your next offer which is coming soon!”)

At a step 316, a fifth transmission is formed, including information about offer communications or rewards. The fifth transmission may be for delivery to one or more users of the offer system 100 such as the issuer of the account to the offer recipient (o) 102. For example, at the step 316, the fifth transmission may be formed, including the data about the reward for rendering as a soft copy upon the communication device of the offer recipient (o) 102. The data about the reward sent to the offer recipient (o) 102, may include the offer recipient's (o) 102 eligibility for the reward, the value of the reward, other actions that the offer recipient (o) 102 may take to receive the value of the reward, means to initiate an interactive session with the offer recipient (o) 102 to inquire further about the reward (e.g., via a web browser), or provide a report on a plurality of rewards that the offer recipient (o) 102 may have received or was eligible for in the past, for example.

Alternatively, or in combination, the data about the reward may be rendered by the communication device of the merchant (m) 104 that engaged in a transaction with the offer recipient (o) 102. For example, the data about the reward associated with a redeemed offer of the merchant (1) 104 may be printed on the white space of a receipt for the transaction between the merchant (2) 104 and the offer recipient (o) 102.

Other combinations of hard copy and soft copy renderings of offer communications or rewards are also applicable. In one implementation, a soft copy rendering of the offer is initially communicated to the offer recipient (o) 102 at a POI terminal of the merchant (1) 104 (e.g., via an Internet browser), the announcement about the offer is rendered as a hard copy at a POI terminal (e.g., cash register) of the merchant (2) 104 while the offer recipient (o) 102 is engaging in a transaction unrelated to the offer of the merchant (1) 104, or the data about the reward is rendered as a soft copy, acoustically relayed to the offer recipient (o) 102 via the mobile device 202. Similarly, the first offer communication, announcement, and data about the reward may each be rendered in soft copy form or each rendered in hard copy form.

Exemplary Transaction Processing System

A transaction processing system facilitates the processing of cashless transactions conducted through the use of an account such as a debit account, a credit account, a checking account, or a loyalty account where points can be redeemed (e.g., 50 reward points in a loyalty program are equal to $20 (US) toward a purchase). Other examples of the accounts include: debit, revolving credit, charge, stored-value, prepaid (e.g., reloadable account, Flexible Spending Account, Healthcare Savings Account), gift, commercial, corporate, government, or a combination thereof.

An exemplary transaction processing system 400 is depicted in FIG. 4. Transaction processing system 400 can be operated in the environment of FIG. 1 in which an offer recipient (o) 102 of the implementations disclosed herein can receive an offer communication. The general environment of FIG. 4 includes that of a merchant (m) 104 who can conduct a transaction for goods and/or services (“resources”) with an account user (au) (e.g., offer recipient (o) 102) on an account issued to an account holder (a) 408 by an issuer (i) 404, where the processes of paying and being paid for the transaction are coordinated by a transaction handler (th) 406 (e.g., the transaction handler (th) 206). The transaction handler (th) 406 can be transaction handler (1) 406 through transaction handler (TH) 406, where “TH” can be up to and greater than an eight digit integer. The transaction includes participation from different entities that are each a component of the transaction processing system 400. The transaction processing system 400 has a plurality of merchants 104 and transaction handlers 406. Transaction processing system 400 has a plurality of accounts 408 each of which is held by a corresponding account holder (1) 408 through account holder (a) 408, where A can be up to and greater than a ten digit integer.

Transaction processing system 400 includes account user (1) 408 through account user (AU) 408, where AU can be as large as a ten digit integer or larger. Each account user (au) conducts a transaction with merchant (m) 104 for goods and/or services using the account that has been issued by an issuer (i) 404 to a corresponding account holder (a) 408. Data from the transaction on the account is collected by the merchant (m) 104 and forwarded to a corresponding acquirer (a) 402. Acquirer (a) 402 forwards the data to the transaction handler (th) 406 who facilitates payment for the transaction from the account of the account holder (a) 408 issued by the issuer (i) 404.

Transaction processing system 400 has a plurality of issuers (1-i) 404. Each issuer (i) 404 may be assisted in processing one or more transactions by a corresponding agent issuer (ai) 404, where ‘i’ can be an integer from 1 to I, where ‘ai’ can be an integer from 1 to AI, and where I and AI can be as large as an eight digit integer or larger.

Transaction processing system 400 has a plurality of acquirers (q) 402. Each acquirer (q) 402 may be assisted in processing one or more transactions by a corresponding agent acquirer (aq) 402, where ‘q’ can be an integer from 1 to Q, where aq can be an integer from 1 to AQ, and where Q and AQ can be as large as an eight digit integer or larger. Each acquirer (q) 402 may be assisted in processing one or more transactions by a corresponding agent acquirer (aq) 402, where ‘q’ can be an integer from 1 to Q, where aq can be an integer from 1 to AQ, and where Q and AQ can be as large as a eight digit integer or larger.

The transaction handler (th) 406 may process a plurality of transactions within the transaction processing system 400. The transaction handler (th) 406 can include one or a plurality or networks and switches (ns) 406. Each network/switch (ns) 406 can be a mainframe computer in a geographic location different than each other network/switch (ns) 406, where ‘ns’ is an integer from one to NS, and where NS can be as large as a four digit integer or larger.

Dedicated communication systems 420, 422 (e.g., private communication network(s)) facilitate communication between the transaction handler (th) 406 and each issuer (i) 404 and each acquirer (a) 402. The Network 412, via e-mail, the World Wide Web, cellular telephony, and/or other optionally public and private communications systems, can facilitate communications 422 a-422 e among and between each issuer (i) 404, each acquirer (a) 402, each merchant (m) 104, each account holder (a) 408, and the transaction handler (th) 406. Alternatively and optionally, one or more dedicated communication systems 424, 426, and 428 can facilitate respective communications between each acquirer (a) 402 and each merchant (m) 104, each merchant (m) 104 and each account holder (a) 408, and each account holder (a) 408 and each issuer (i) 404, respectively.

Merchant (m) 104 may be a person or entity that sells goods and/or services. Merchant (m) 104 may also be, for instance, a manufacturer, a distributor, a retailer, a load agent, a drugstore, a grocery store, a gas station, a hardware store, a supermarket, a boutique, a restaurant, or a doctor's office. In a business-to-business setting, the account holder (a) 408 may be a second merchant (m) 104 making a purchase from another merchant (m) 104. Merchant (m) 104 may utilize at least one point-of-interaction terminal (e.g., Point of Service or browser enabled consumer cellular telephone) that can communicate with the account user (au) 408, the acquirer (a) 402, the transaction handler (th) 406, or the issuer (i) 404. Thus, the point-of-interaction terminal is in operative communication with the transaction processing system 400.

Each account 408 may be associated with a corresponding account identifier. The corresponding account identifier may be, for example, any code, symbol, number, letter, digital signal, analog signal, digital certificate, biometric code, or other indicia usable to distinguish or identify the account holder (a) 408, the account user (au) 408, or the corresponding account 408. Nonetheless, the account identifier of the corresponding account 408 may be used to distinguish past transactions of the account holder (a) 408 or the account user (au) 408, without knowing the identity of the account holder (a) 408 or the account user (au) 408 (e.g., the legal name of the account holder (a) 408). For example, if ten of the past transactions of the account holder (a) 408 stored in the DB 110 were each conducted upon the account 408 with the account identifier “4234567890123456,” then each of the ten past transactions can be distinguished by filtering the data in the DB 110 using the account identifier “4234567890123456,” even without knowing the legal name of the account holder (a) 408 to whom the account was issued by issuer (i) 402.

The corresponding account identifier can be used for purposes other than distinguishing the account 408, activities on the account 408, the account holder (a) 408, or the account user (au) 408, within the transaction processing system 400. For example, the corresponding account identifier may be a numeric code, wherein the first six numbers are a Bank Identification Number (BIN) that denotes the issuing bank and the category of the account associated with the corresponding account identifier (e.g., “gold card” account).

A portable consumer device (PCD) may be associated with an account 408 of account holder (a) 408 that was issued to the account holder (a) 408 by issuer (i) 404. The PCD may be in a form factor that can be a payment card, a gift card, a smartcard, a smart media, a payroll card, a healthcare card, a wrist band, a machine readable medium containing account information, a keychain device, such as a SPEEDPASS® device commercially available from ExxonMobil Corporation, a supermarket discount card, a cellular telephone, personal digital assistant, a pager, a security card, an access card, a wireless terminal, or a transponder. For example, the PCD may include a volatile or non-volatile memory to store information such as the account number or an account holder (a) 408's name.

The PCD may interface with the point-of-interaction terminal using a mechanism including any suitable electrical, magnetic, or optical interfacing system such as a contactless system using radio frequency or magnetic field recognition system or contact system such as a magnetic stripe reader. The point-of-interaction terminal sends a transaction authorization request to the issuer (i) 404 of the account associated with the portable consumer device. Alternatively, or in combination, the portable consumer device may communicate with issuer (i) 404, transaction handler (th) 406, or acquirer (a) 402.

Typically, a transaction begins with account holder (a) 408 or the account user (au) 408 presenting a corresponding account identifier of an account 408 to the merchant (m) 104 to initiate an exchange of currency for a resource. Other data that may be presented to merchant (m) 104 may include a corresponding: expiration date, a consumer name (e.g. a name of the offer recipient (o) 102), and/or a Personal Identification Number (PIN). The transfer of data may be in any format recognizable by the merchant (m) 104, such as in a magnetic stripe track data format. For example, the account holder (a) 408 may present the PCD that is associated with the account 408 to the POI of the merchant (m) 104 by swiping a plastic card in a magstripe card reader at the POI or by bringing an RFID enabled PCD in an effective proximity of an RFID reader so as to be interrogated.

Thereafter, the merchant (m) 104 may use the POI to form an authorization request that may including transaction information about the resource being purchased and the account identifier received from the account holder (a) 408. The transaction information may have several data fields. For example, as is known by those of ordinary skill in the relevant art, the data fields may include: a name of the account holder (a) 408, the account identifier (e.g., Primary Account Number or “PAN”), an expiration date of the PCD, a Card Verification Value (CVV), a Personal Identification Number (PIN), a discretionary code of the issuer of the account, a date, a time of the transaction, a merchant identifier (e.g., merchant indicator) of the corresponding merchant (m) 104, data usable to determine a location of the merchant (m) 104, a POI identifier, a total transaction amount, a Universal Product Code of the resource being purchased, a Stock Keeping Unit of the resource being purchased, a promotion code, an offer code, or an acquirer code of the acquirer (q) 402 associated with the corresponding merchant (m) 104.

The authorization request may be communicated to the acquirer (q) 402. The acquirer (q) 402 forwards the authorization request, and perhaps other information, to transaction handler (th) 406. Transaction handler (th) 406 may, in turn, forward the authorization request, and perhaps other information, to the issuer (i) 404 that issued the account. In some implementations, the transaction handler (th) 406 may forward the authorization request to another transaction handler (th-1) 406 who then forwards the authorization request to issuer (i) 404.

Issuer (i) 404 may authorize the transaction and forward same to the transaction handler (th) 406. Transaction handler (th) 406 may also clear the transaction. Authorization includes issuer (i) 404, or transaction handler (th) 406 on behalf of issuer (i) 404, authorizing the transaction in connection with issuer (i) 404's instructions such as through the use of rules. For example, the issuer (i) 404 may determine that the account has enough funds to cover paying for the resources being purchased or that the transaction has a low risk of fraud based on a determined location of the merchant (m) 104 that is conducting the transaction with account holder (a) 408. Thereafter, the issuer (i) 402 may form the authorization response for delivery to the transaction handler (th) 406. The transaction handler (th) 406 may forward the authorization response to the acquirer (q) 402, who in turn forwards the authorization response to merchant (m) 104. Once approved, the merchant (m) 104 may record the authorization, allowing the account user (au) 408 to receive the resource from the merchant (m) 104 or an agent thereof.

The merchant (m) 104 may, at discrete periods, such as the end of the day, submit a list of authorized transactions to the acquirer (q) 402 or other transaction related data for processing through the transaction processing system 400, such as for clearing and settlement. Clearing includes the exchange of financial information between the issuer (i) 404 and the acquirer (a) 402 and settlement includes the exchange of funds. The transaction handler (th) 406 may route the clearing and settlement request from the corresponding acquirer (q) 402 to the corresponding issuer (i) 404 that is involved in the corresponding transaction. Once the acquirer (q) 402 receives the funds from the account upon which the transaction was conducted, where the funds received from issuer (i) 402 matches a payment for the purchased resource, acquirer (q) 402 can make the funds available to the merchant (m) 104 less any transaction costs, such as fees. The settlement of the transaction may include depositing an amount of the transaction settlement from a settlement house, such as a settlement bank, which transaction handler (th) 406 typically chooses, into a clearinghouse, such as a clearing bank, that acquirer (a) 402 typically chooses. The issuer (i) 404 deposits the same from a clearinghouse, such as a clearing bank, which the issuer (i) 404 typically chooses, into the settlement house. If the transaction involves a debit or pre-paid account, the acquirer (q) 402 may choose not to wait for the transfer of funds prior to paying the merchant (m) 104.

The transaction handler (th) 406 may maintain a log or history of the transactions as they pass through the transaction processing system 400. In one implementation, the transaction handler (th) 406 may store the transaction information received during the processing of the transaction in the DB 110, such as: the transaction information received in the authorization request, the authorization response, or data received during the clearing and settlement process. There may be intermittent steps in the foregoing process, some of which may occur simultaneously. Thus, a typical transaction involves various entities to request, authorize, and fulfill processing the transaction.

The transaction processing system 400 will preferably have network components suitable for scaling the number and data payload size of transactions that can be authorized, cleared and settled in both real time and batch processing. These include hardware, software, data elements, and storage network devices for the same. Examples of transaction processing system 400 include those operated, at least in part, by: American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc; MasterCard International, Inc.; Discover Financial Services, Inc.; First Data Corporation; Diners Club International, LTD; Visa Inc.; and agents of the foregoing.

Each of the network/switch (ns) 406 can include one or more data centers for processing transactions, where each transaction can include up to 100 kilobytes of data or more. The data corresponding to the transaction can include information about the types and quantities of goods and services in the transaction, information about the account holder (a) 408, the account user (au) 408, the merchant (m) 104, tax and incentive treatment(s) of the goods and services, offers, coupons, rebates, rewards, loyalty, discounts, returns, exchanges, cash-back transactions, etc.

By way of example, network/switch (ns) 406 can include one or more mainframe computers (e.g., one or more IBM mainframe computers) for one or more server farms (e.g., one or more Sun UNIX Super servers), where the mainframe computers and server farms can be in diverse geographic locations.

Each issuer (i) 404 (or agent issuer (ai) 404 thereof) and each acquirer (a) 402 (or agent acquirer (aq) 402 thereof) can use or more router/switch (e.g., Cisco™ routers/switches) to communicate with each network/switch (ns) 406 via dedicated communication systems.

Transaction handler (th) 406 can store information about transactions processed through transaction processing system 400 in data warehouses such as may be incorporated as part of the plurality of networks/switches 406. This information can be data mined. The data mining transaction research and modeling can be used for advertising, merchant offers, account holder and merchant loyalty incentives and rewards, fraud detection and prediction, and to develop tools to demonstrate savings and efficiencies made possible by use of the transaction processing system 400 over paying and being paid by cash, or other traditional payment mechanisms.

The VisaNet® system is an example component of the transaction handler (th) 406 in the transaction processing system 400. Presently, the VisaNet® system is operated in part by Visa Inc. As of 2007, the VisaNet® system Inc. was processing around 300 million transactions daily, on over 1 billion accounts used in over 170 countries. Financial instructions numbering over 16,000 connected through the VisaNet® system to around 30 million merchants (m) 104. In 2007, around 81 billion transactions for about 4 trillion U.S. dollars were cleared and settled through the VisaNet® system, some of which involved a communication length of around 24,000 miles in around two (2) seconds.

The various steps or acts in a method or process may be performed in the order shown, or may be performed in another order. Additionally, one or more process or method steps may be omitted or one or more process or method steps may be added to the methods and processes. An additional step, block, or action may be added in the beginning, end, or intervening existing elements of the methods and processes. Based on the disclosure and teachings provided herein, a person of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate other ways and/or methods for various implements. Moreover, it is understood that a functional step of described methods or processes, and combinations thereof can be implemented by computer program instructions that, when executed by a processor, create means for implementing the functional steps. The instructions may be included in computer readable medium that can be loaded onto a general purpose computer, a special purpose computer, or other programmable apparatus.

It is understood that the examples and implementations described herein are for illustrative purposes only and that various modifications or changes in light thereof will be suggested to persons skilled in the art and are to be included within the spirit and purview of this application and scope of the appended claims. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer-implemented method, comprising: providing a computing apparatus including a transaction handler having: an interactive engine; an analytics engine; and a client processing engine; storing, in computing apparatus, transaction data related to a plurality of transactions processed by the client processing engine of the transaction handler, each of the transactions being processed to make a payment from an issuer to an acquirer via the transaction handler in response to an account identifier of a first customer issued by the issuer and submitted by a merchant to the acquirer, the issuer to make the payment on behalf of the first customer, the acquirer to receive the payment on behalf of the merchant; receiving, by the client processing engine of the computing apparatus from a point of interaction terminal of a first merchant, a first transmission of an authorization request for a first transaction of payment from the first customer using the account identifier to the first merchant, the first transmission having: first data identifying the first customer, and second data identifying the point of interaction terminal communicatively connected to the transaction handler; retrieving, using the first data, a logical address of a communication device of the first customer; retrieving, using the second data, first capability data stored in the computing apparatus, wherein the first capability data specifying a capability of the point of interaction terminal in generating a hard copy of offers, the capability specified in the first capability data including: dimensions of a hard copy output of the point of interaction terminal; and white space availability on receipts rendered by the point of interaction terminal; selecting, by the analytics engine of the computing apparatus, an offer compatible with the capability of the point of interaction terminal identified in the first capability data and based in part on a portion of the transaction data, wherein the offer is from a second merchant; generating, by the computing apparatus, a condition of the offer based on a distance between a location of the first merchant and a location of the second merchant; in response to the authorization request for the first transaction of payment from the first customer to the first merchant, transmitting, by the computing apparatus, a second transmission to the point of interaction terminal of the first merchant, the second transmission identifying the offer and the condition generated based on the distance, wherein: the second transmission received at the point of interaction terminal causes the point of interaction terminal to generate a hard copy of a receipt for the first transaction of payment, and the hard copy of the receipt includes the offer and the condition included in the second transmission; storing, in the computing apparatus, status tracking data of the offer; after the second transmission, determining, by the computing apparatus, a real-time physical location of the communication device of the first customer that is disparate from the point of interaction terminal of the first merchant; determining, by the computing apparatus, an update for the offer from the second merchant, based on: a current status of the offer, the real-time physical location of the communication device, and the location of the second merchant; forming, by the computing apparatus, a third transmission of an announcement identifying the update for the offer; and transmitting, by the interactive engine using the logical address, the third transmission to the communication device of the first customer.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the point of interaction terminal comprises one of: a virtual POS terminal, an Automated Teller Machine (ATM), a personal digital assistant, a mobile phone, a computer terminal, an intercommunication system device, a display device, and an audio device.
 3. The method of claim 2, wherein the offer is redeemable towards a second transaction different from the first transaction.
 4. The method of claim 2, wherein the first data comprises a globally unique identifier of the first customer.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein the second communication device of the first customer is a mobile device.
 6. The method of claim 5, further comprising: retrieving, using the first data, second capability data stored in the computing apparatus, the second capability data identifying a capability of the mobile device in rendering a soft copy of the announcement; and forming the announcement based on the capability of the mobile device of the first customer.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein the offer comprises at least one of: coupon, incentive, reward, cash back, and discount.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein the announcement comprises a reminder to redeem the offer.
 9. The method of claim 1, wherein the announcement comprises a notification of a reward for a transaction that uses the offer.
 10. A non-transitory computer storage medium storing instructions, which when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform a method, the method comprising: storing, in a computing apparatus including a transaction handler having an interactive engine, an analytics engine, and a client processing engine, transaction data related to a plurality of transactions processed by the client processing engine of the transaction handler, each of the transactions being processed to make a payment from an issuer to an acquirer via the transaction handler in response to an account identifier of a first customer issued by the issuer and submitted by a merchant to the acquirer, the issuer to make the payment on behalf of the first customer, the acquirer to receive the payment on behalf of the merchant; receiving, by the client processing engine of the computing apparatus from a point of interaction terminal of a first merchant, a first transmission of an authorization request for a first transaction of payment from the first customer using the account identifier to the first merchant, the first transmission having: first data identifying the first customer, and second data identifying the point of interaction terminal communicatively connected to the transaction handler: retrieving, using the first data, a logical address of a communication device of the first customer; retrieving, using the second data, first capability data stored in the computing apparatus, wherein the first capability data specifying a capability of the point of interaction terminal in generating a hard copy of offers, the capability specified in the first capability data including: dimensions of a hard copy output of the point of interaction terminal; and white space availability on receipts rendered by the point of interaction terminal; selecting, by the analytics engine of the computing apparatus, an offer compatible with the capability of the point of interaction terminal identified in the first capability data and based in part on a portion of the transaction data, wherein the offer is from a second merchant; generating, by the computing apparatus, a condition of the offer based on a distance between a location of the first merchant and a location of the second merchant; in response to the authorization request for the first transaction of payment from the first customer to the first merchant, transmitting, by the computing apparatus, a second transmission to the point of interaction terminal of the first merchant, the second transmission identifying the offer and the condition generated based on the distance, wherein: the second transmission received at the point of interaction terminal causes the point of interaction terminal to generate a hard copy of a receipt for the first transaction of payment, and the hard copy of the receipt includes the offer and the condition included in the second transmission; storing, in the computing apparatus, status tracking data of the offer; after the second transmission, determining, by the computing apparatus, a real-time physical location of the communication device disparate of the first customer that is from the point of interaction terminal of the first merchant; determining, by the computing apparatus, an update for the offer from the second merchant, based on: a current status of the offer, the real-time physical location of the communication device, and the location of the second merchant; forming, by the computing apparatus, a third transmission of an announcement identifying the update for the offer; and transmitting, by the interactive engine using the logical address, the third transmission to the communication device of the first customer.
 11. The medium of claim 10, wherein the offer comprises at least one of: a coupon, an incentive, a rebate, a reward, and a discount. 